Tuesday, November 28

This is my excolleague and good friend's blog on Blogspot. Looks like he took to blogging after moving to Bangalore.

Li Da stands for Lionel David, and he is one of my good friends. It was fun when he wa with us, cos, we used to fight almost every other day, and at the same time, support when required. I am not sure if he would agree with this.

when I moved from Hyderabad to Chennai, this is a small company with around 30 employees, at Chennai and US. I am still not sure of what made me take the decision to move to this place, but, after two years here, I am glad that I made the move and never regretted the decision.

Today, we are 300+work force, with 6 facilities in India and couple in US. Its still growing. I am happy and feel proud to be one of the people who worked towards its growth. I joined here as a Analyst programmer, and with in short duration, I had grown to the level of taking care of a project with a team of 10 members on my own, as a PL. I got the opp to work in the areas I like, work in the project I like and do what I like. Career wise, I got complete freedom to chose my path.

I am able to resume a lot of activities that I used to take up in school and college. Basically, I am learning, learning to be a leader, learning to do a lot of things. The management trusted me and trusts me and I am working hard to keep it up.

I think that if I had not made the move, where would I have been and I cannot even imagine. I never thought of it. I cannot even think of moving from here. but, there might be a day, when I get married, when I had to leave all these wonderful people and the company and step into a new life.

Some of the lessons I had learnt across the experience of working with different people and projects and clients from different countries are

1 Communicate as much as possible. modes of communication can be anything, but communicate. Only when you communicate, can you know what exactly you are doing and how the task is to be completed. Even a small task needs good communication. Well communicated and documented tasks are always a success2. Question the person giving the task or requirements, if you feel that it is not the way. You may be wrong, but, it need not be that the other person is right.3. Brainstorming a problem helps you in acheiving it earlier, with little re-work. else, you may end up doing more work and spend more time than you spend on the brainstorming session and the development.4. Accept mistakes and be open for changes. Technology is changing so fast and we should be ready to change with it. We may not be able to catch up immediately, but, we should not be in a position that we can never catch it.5. Learn to adapt to the mindset of the person with whom you are dealing, and this is applicable for all the people, irrespective of the culture or nationality. This does not mean that we need to change ourselves. We can be oursleves, still, learning about the other person and trying to make things happen as per that person would be helpful for them. it need not be a senior, it can be ur junior also, some one who is reporting to you6. Let the people manage themselves, this is what one of my managers used to say and thats very apt. If you have a team that can manage itself, your work is reduced. else you end up working for them. And you can never grow.7. Giving space for others to execute their tasks in the way they wish to do is also important.8. A major lesson I learnt by experience is that, if you want to have a team that is close to you and trust you, never ever take up their work. even if they cannot do that. Let some one else do that, be a guide and guide them. Overlook how things are going.9. Interfering in the work of team is what many tend to do. Everyone should be capable of making their own decisions, we should make and let others make theirs. if they are not ready to make, we should help them in doing that, rather than take decisions for them.

All these, I learnt from my experience and experience of others. These are quite few. Many more are there, which would be shared soon.

I am able to recognise the above mentioned issues, thanks to my management. They helped me, guided me, gave me the opportunities. And are still giving me, with trust :-)

couple of weeks back, one of our directors was supposed to visit our facility at Chennai. We came to office, expecting him to be there at any moment. Then, we get a news that he met with a serious accident the earlier day, and hence, not coming. we tried to reach him, but could not.

Some how, we reached him, and came to understand that he is fine and he lost the mobile.

Now, later, one of our colleagues explained what has happened and also gave us a photoshow. Seeing it, we were able to understand the magnitude (hope the word is right) of the accident. The car was damaged completly in the front. We learnt that it had leapt 50 mts into the air and got reversed. Some thing sort of what they show in films. Inspite of all this, he came with little injuries. The reason, he was wearing seat belt.

We were all happy that he is fine, and one lesson learnt is to use seat belt at all times.

Those of you out there who are reluctant to use seat belts while travelling, please start using them. They might cause discomfort for few mins, but, using it is worth a life.